It wasn't all just a dream (FBOFW)

"I had that dream again..."

"Modern Elly introduces our hybrid for Sunday, breaking the mold of having Mike introduce the strips via photo album. And just why is she breaking the mold? In case you had not read the Chicago Tribune article, or any of the articles about Lynn Johnston over the last two months, Rod Johnston left Lynn Johnston for another woman. First she told the people who read Canadian newspapers. Then she told the people who read United States newspapers. And now she is informing her Sunday readers in a way a little more subtle than her newspaper articles. I suppose the laundry seems a little less dirty this way.

The humour of this situation back in those days would have been the fact John is in Elly’s bed, so obviously he couldn’t be unfaithful. Ergo, the little woman is paranoid. Ho ho! Well, that’s really very funny, isn’t it?

John sits and listens as Elly demonstrates how she begged with two hands together in the dream and she sheds two actual tears as a part of her presentation. Look how worked up Elly is over nothing. Why that’s a laugh riot. However, this is the crucial panel in comparison to the modern Lynn Johnston. Look at it.
That Rod Johnston actually walked away from Lynn Johnston with that other woman and they laughed at her. That SOB. If I ever see him I am going to kick his ass for treating that nice Lynn Johnston that way. Well, I may not actually kick his ass, but he is in for a good talking-to, and I may even use a few Quebecois words to his face. That’s right. You heard me. To. His. Face. It’s one thing to cheat on your wife, but to laugh about it…well, you just don’t do that to a nice woman like Lynn.
After all, she has cooked and cleaned for him for almost 30 years. She gave up her university degree for him. She gave him 3 children and practically raised them all by herself. And when he was at the house, she treated him like…well, like…OK. She did kind of treat him like he was a baby, who couldn’t load a dishwasher or fold a towel or do much of anything right. She did say, “I told you so” to him as often as she possibly could, with a hurled coffee cup as an enforcer. Maybe Lynn Johnston wasn’t perfect, but that doesn’t excuse the laughing. The damnable laughing.
What’s that?  You say that For Better or For Worse is not an exact duplicate of the life of Lynn and Rod Johnston. Well, good. We would hate for people to think there were parallels and get the wrong impression about Rod and Lynn’s relationship just from reading today’s strip."

"Weel, it's not like this is a real surprise when you look at what she's done hfor years. Just like Mike and Liz are living the lives she wishes Aaron and Katie were living and April is the third child she wishes she had, Elly gets to have the stable marriage real life denied her."

"Again, I question exactly WHY Lynn is fishing for so much attention about what to most of us is a private family matter.
WHY does she need to alert the presses that an old Sunday strip featuring characters which are STILL HAPPILY MARRIED is liekomgsoIRONIC cuz my husband just LEFT ME yanno?"

"Is it really sticking it to her ex to run a strip where she panics that he's going to leave her?"
"Strip was prob chosen for last panel where John, Rod's Avatar, says he's sorry..."

"How weird is it that we have a strip where Elly is all clingy, yet in the Connie/Elly flashbacks, she wishes she could be free and single again?"

"I am surprised she ran this one. This was selected after her marriage tanked, and leaving aside the knowledge that there's a whole community of snarkers out there who will eat this for breakfast ... in her place, I would have burned the goddamned thing and tried to forget I ever drew it."

Off-topic #1:

"Can there be subtext in a story within a story? Because I think I see harsh subtext in the Saga of Sheilaughhh.
I can smell the potatoes on the stove and I can see resignation forming on the face of a woman who is old at 26. She's waiting for her husband to come home. She's waiting for him to see his baby; a son he neither wants nor wished for. A son who won't be useful til he's grown.
So a woman who got pregnant when her husband didn't want kids, who perhaps even contrived at it while letting him think she was taking precautions, is doomed to a life of abuse and deprivation. Hmmmmm..."

"It really is quite alarming how Michael has gone from just a bratty kid who teased his little sister to the biggest Gary Stu in comics.
How can someone who knew Sparky think that it's ENTERTAINING watching someone get whatever they want with absolutely no real toil and being loved and admired by absolutely EVERYONE??"

Off-topic #2:  Reefer Madness Couldn't Have Possibly Prepared You.

"I never thought marihuana could be the cause of something so evil... rape, sure, murder, of course, hit-and-runs, that's a given... but Stone Season? I... I didn't know! I didn't knooow..."

"As per our agreement, the... 'artistic' photos of Deanna Patterson and yourself will be returned."

"You're on the wrong side of the law," Weed threatened. "Iris could have beaten old man Jim to death with any book. Stone Season didn't make her do it—she just happened to have it handy because Mike's been handing them out like hot dickings. It was the years of neglect and stress that made her do it."